Among the things that I missed most as a student, was a small library.
If I had had one, I believe I should have dipped more deeply into books
and into life as well; but it was not given me. During the period which
is most fruitful for the maturing of the mind, that is, during the years
from twelve to twenty, I lived by turns in six or seven cities, and as
it was impossible to travel about with books, I never retained any.
A lack of books was the occasion of my failure to form the habit of
re-reading, of tasting again and again and of relishing what I read, and
also of making notes in the margin.
Nearly all authors who own a small library, in which the books are
properly arranged, and nicely annotated, become famous.
I am not sentimentalizing about stolid, brazen note-taking, such as that
with which the gentlemen of the Ateneo debase their books, because that
merely indicates barbarous lack of culture and an obtuseness which is
Kabyline.
Having had no library in my youth, I have never possessed the old
favourites that everybody carries in his pocket into the country, and
reads over and over until he knows them by heart.
I have looked in and out of books as travellers do in and out of inns,
not stopping long in any of them. I am very sorry but it is too late now
for the loss to be repaired.